Energy Conservation

Reducing our use of fossil fuels is an urgent necessity. With ever more dire predictions for global warming over the coming century, reducing our consumption of fossil fuels is a necessity for the preservation of our society. Global warming will put increasing stress on our fresh water supplies, and food production, while threatening ever more severe storms. On the supply side, oil industry experts warn us that we are at or near the peak potential for world wide oil production and are headed for a period of irreversible decline in production. Similarly, estimates of U.S. coal reserves have seen a significant downward revision in recent years, while the energy content of the coal we mine declines as high quality anthracite, bituminous, and sub-bituminous coal reserves become depleted and we become increasingly reliant on low quality lignite reserves.

These two factors highlight how unsustainable our economy has become. We face major changes in the way we produce and consume energy—that much is unavoidable. Renewable energy will be an important part of a conversion to a more sustainable economy. But, perhaps even more important will be conservation.

The Energy Information Agency provides a bi-yearly review of the amount of energy consumed in the U.S. According to the most recent report, the U.S. consumed just under 100 quadrillion Btu’s of energy in 2008. Of this, 6.8% came from renewable sources or biofuels. Nuclear power accounted for 8.2%, and fossil fuels accounted for the remaining 85%.

The EIA projects that renewable energy sources will be the fastest growing energy sector, but that it will not grow enough to replace any existing fossil fuel sources. By 2020, renewables are projected to grow from 6.84 quads to 9.26 quads, nuclear power is projected to grow from 8.21 quads to 8.99 quads, while fossil fuels are projected to grow from 84.73 quads to 87.19 quads. While renewables show the biggest percentage growth, fossil fuels are still projected to grow by a slightly larger absolute amount. Additionally, the EIA projects that CO2 emissions will grow from 5814 million metric tons in 2009 to 5985 million metric tons in 2020.

The Obama administration has called for a 17% reduction in CO2 emission by 2020—a rather modest goal—but this would mean that, rather than the 2.46 quad increase in fossil fuel energy by 2020, that we would have to reduce fossil fuel use by 14.4 quads. Even this modest target is an enormous challenge, representing a more energy production than the EIA projects for all renewables in 2020. This goal can only be reached by increasing efforts to bring renewable energy online and by simultaneously pursuing conservation at every level possible.

Pollution in a crowded, toxic world

Early gains in curbing pollution made after passage of legislation such as the Clean Air Act and Clean Water Act are being challenged by an ever expanding use of toxic chemicals in all phases of our economy. Ever growing economies, expanding populations, and the waste generated by them are posing more and more health risks.

Recently a Center for Disease Control study found perchlorate, a chemical in rocket fuel, at potentially dangerous levels in powdered infant formula. At too high a level, perchlorate can damage the thyroid and hinder brain development in infants. The problem is magnified by the existence of perchlorate in many of the water systems in the country. Although there is debate over what constitutes a dangerous level of perchlorate, the CDC study estimated that 54% of infants drinking perchlorate contaminated formula would exceed EPA limits with water containing 4 parts per million or more—a level found in at least 26 states.

Another recent study found a group of chemicals used in coatings on food wrappers in human blood. Food wrapper coatings break down inside the human body into a chemical known as C8 which is linked to a variety of adverse health effects.

Another product recently found to be dangerously polluted is drywall imported from China. Studies have found that samples of some Chinese drywall contained sulfur compounds which gave a sulfurous odor when exposed to extreme heat and moisture, creating a corrosive environment in the home. Owners complained of headaches and respiratory problems while copper wiring became corroded. Although most of the drywall went to Florida, the U.S. Consumer Product Safety Commission is investigating complaints in , Alabama, Louisiana, Washington and North Carolina as well. Class-action lawsuits are lining up against Chinese manufacturers as well as suppliers and builders.

A significant source of pollution that has gone virtually unrecognized are the 90,000 cargo ships that ship exports around the world. The biggest of these ships have engines which weigh 2,300 tons and use a low grade fuel oil that has up to 20,000 times the sulphur content of diesel fuel used in automobiles. One giant container ship can emit the same amount of cancer and asthma causing chemicals as 50 million cars. The ships account for around 4% of the greenhouse gasses emitted in the world.

The US government only recently set up a 230 mile buffer zone along the entire US coast after research showed that pollution from the cargo ships leads to 60,000 deaths a year in the US alone, driving up health care costs by some $330 billion. The buffer zone will impose air quality standards that will require cutting sulphur in fuel by 98%, partulate matter by 85% and nitrogen oxide emissions by 80%. The UN’s International Maritime Organization and the EU are under pressure to follow suit.

Even efforts to recycle waste material have resulted in toxic effects from chemicals in the waste. In recent years, treated sewage sludge has been used as fertilizer on farms. As early as 2002 studies were showing that exposure to this sludge resulted in burning eyes and lungs, skin rashes and other symptoms. This year a lawsuit in Missouri alleges that sludge from a St. Joseph tannery containing hexavalent chromium, had been used as fertilizer in four counties, causing brain tumors in at least two patients. In Canada, some communities and environmental groups are fighting Ontario’s plan to allow sewage sludge to be spread on farmers’ fields without a waste-disposal permit.

The problems of waste disposal and pollution continue to grow as the amount of waste grows. Industrial chemicals are making their way into our bodies in ever greater amounts. People are very literally choking on the waste created by human society. As the world grows ever smaller, these problems can only continue to multiply.

The Great Transition

The present economic crisis is widely acknowledged to be the worst since the Great Depression. Some have taken to calling the current downturn the Great Recession. But today’s crisis has important differences, including growing resource pressures, particularly with energy sources, as well as the effects of climate changes brought on by global warming. Unlike previous recessions, this downturn will require fundamental changes—a Great Transition to a more sustainable society.

Today’s recession and the Great Depression share some characteristics: a precipitous decline in the stock market, major bank failures caused by wave of deregulation, and a deflationary market (at least in housing) that worsened the position of debtors. Although today’s crisis has not yet reached the magnitude of the 1930s, millions of people have lost their jobs, millions have fallen into poverty, tent cities have appeared, reminiscent of the Hoovervilles of the 1930s.

Economists and politicians, like generals who prepare for the last war, have been determined not to make the same mistakes that were made 8 decades ago, and are flooding the market with liquidity while spending billions to create new jobs to bolster consumer demand.

Yet there are unique problems today not present in either the Depression, or any of the recessions since. Growing resource pressure played no small part in causing the present downturn. Worldwide production of oil has been flat for four years and is expected to soon roll over into permanent decline. Economist James Hamilton examined last year’s downturn and concluded that nearly all of it could be explained by the oil price shock. The housing boom saw home buyers moving ever farther out into the suburbs to buy cheaper homes. Then high energy prices helped burst the bubble by making these long commute suburbs unaffordable.

Food stockpiles have declined over the past decade causing prices to rise. Growing demand for bio-fuels aggravated the situation by taking acreage away from food production. While rising prices in the U.S. added to recessionary pressures, third world countries faced both price spikes and shortages of food and fuel, throwing people into poverty and sparking riots.

None of these problems will be solved by the economic policies of the 1930s. Energy and food prices have fallen due to the recession, but the underlying problems have not gone away. Long term solutions will require a major move away from fossil fuels; it will be a tremendous task. Our suburban/exurban way of life, with its ever bigger houses and ever more powerful cars, is inextricably bound up with oil. Our agribusinesses rely on fossil fuels for everything from fertilizer and pesticides to gas powered tractors and irrigation pumps. The typical food item is shipped some 1,500 miles or more before it is sold.

Although it would have been better if we had faced these problems before they brought the economy down, the recession has seen hints of a transition to a lower carbon lifestyle. Oil consumption has declined for the first time since the oil shocks of the 1970s. The total number of cars registered in the US is predicted to decline in 2009, the first time since World War II. Less driving and a slower economy have resulted in the first significant reduction in the amount of greenhouse gases emitted.

Another World War II phenomenon, the victory garden, is making a comeback, a small move toward more self sufficiency as well as lower energy use. The number of backyard farmers is increasing at a double digit rate; some seed companies are having difficulty keeping up with demand. Even those icons of suburbia, the McMansion and the big box store, are getting a makeover. Abandoned big box stores are no longer automatically torn down to make way for new development, but are being transformed into charter schools, health centers, a chapel, a library, even a spam museum. At least one developer of McMansions has subdivided the homes into “quartets;” four family homes offering the affordability of a condominium along with a smaller carbon footprint.

Thus far the transition to a lower energy/lower carbon future has been haphazard, in response to higher energy prices and the economic downturn. The cost to those who have been laid off or whose savings has disappeared has been tremendous. The challenge for Greens is to make this incipient transition permanent, and to create a new green economy to replace the old. Instead of bailing out the auto industry, we must transform it for the low carbon future. Instead of saving failed banks so that they can return to business as usual, we must reorient them away from speculative derivative trading toward funding smaller scale, sustainable, local businesses. Green jobs and a zero waste economy must replace our planned

Building a Sustainable Car Culture--Perils and Pitfalls

Cars and light trucks now account for about 20 percent of US greenhouse gas emissions, and more than 40 percent of US oil consumption. This level of pollution comes not only from driving them, but from their construction—including the mining and manufacture of the metals involved which create similar levels of pollution as are created during the the lifetime of their use.

Building hybrid and battery powered cars will not completely solve the problem. There are some 250,000,000 cars in the United States. Replacing even a small portion of them would do very little to reduce the CO2 emissions from the industry. Furthermore, the present generation of hybrid cars are powered by nickel metal hydride batteries. Nickel is particularly energy intensive to mine and refine, adding to the carbon footprint of the hybrid car.

Today’s car culture is inherently inefficient. As a matter of safety, a car’s wheels must hug the road; but this causes a high level of friction that the engine must overcome (this is the reason that trains are more efficient than cars and trucks.) The second problem is the weight of the car. The average car or light truck is around two tons. Even the basic Prius is 2765 pounds—a great deal of weight to carry around one or two people. Cars sold in the U.S. have been getting steadily heavier and more powerful, resulting in lower fuel efficiency. The original Honda Civics build in the 1970s got 40 mpg with a gas engine. Hybrid cars hardly get better mileage today.

Former oil industry analyst, Jan Lunberg, has concluded that we need to “get rid of car dependency.” The present economic downturn has raised questions about whether the auto industry can continue. The $13.4 billion bridge loan given by the federal government to the auto industry in December was to give the industry time to restructure, but the details of that restructuring were not known, although the Obama administration has talked about a “new, hybrid economy.”

More fundamental changes are needed if we are to meet CO2 reduction goals and to reduce our dependency on oil. We will need smaller, less powerful cars, as well as living patterns that bring us closer to work and to shopping. These goals are not receiving serious discussion yet. In all probability they will require further price increases or even shortages before they become politically viable.

Recycling Reconsidered

Recycling has become a almost unchallenged virtue of the environmental movement. Millions of people sort out their paper, plastics and metals for pickup at their curbside. Countries such as Austria, the Netherlands, and Germany recycle over half of their rubbish. However, recently some reservations have been expressed whether recycling always results in a net benefit.

China is a huge part of the market recycled paper and plastics. Shipping tons of refuse thousands of miles to China to be recycled might produce more CO2 than shipping them to a landfill. The recent economic downturn has lessened China's demand for recycled materials causing some of it to pile up on the docks.

Recently, some have argued that oil based materials such as plastics are more efficiently disposed of by incineration.

Some efforts are being made to process more recycled material locally, saving money and energy. Britain is building three new plastics reprocessing plants that will be able to handle most of the 180,000 tons of recycled plastic bottles recycled each year. An anaerobic digester will soon digest 80,000 tons a year of discarded food from the supermarkets in Sainsbury, England. The process generates a mixture of carbon dioxide and methane that is burnt for heat and power. The new process will save several million pounds a year in disposal costs.

The process of recycling is somewhat more complicated than first thought. Maximizing the benefits of recycling requires planning for how the materials will be used, and ultimately even planning when products are constructed to lessen the time and energy necessary to separate materials when the product is recycled.

The New Land Rush

Last year's food crisis that saw record food prices and food riots around the world has touched off a rush by wealthy but food reliant nations to purchase farming land in poorer countries in South and Central Asia, Latin America, and East Africa. Countries such as China, Japan, South Korea and India have been buying up fertile farm land in order to secure their own food supplies.

China's serious water problems and creeping deserts led it to lease lands in Laos, Kazakhstan, Tanzania and Brazil. With $1.8 trillion in foreign exchange reserves, China has had ample funds to buy up land. Similar water problems in India led it to lease land in Burma which already supplies a quarter of its lentil imports. South Korea has secured farmland in Indonesia and Madagascar. South Korea is continuing to negotiate with Madagascar for a deal which would encompass half of Madagascar's arable land. Saudi Arabia has given up its efforts to feed itself and has plans to buy 400,000 hectares of land by early 2009 in Australia, Croatia, Egypt, Eritrea, India, Morocco, Pakistan, Philippines, Sudan, Syria, Thailand, Ukraine and Vietnam.

The new land rush has sparked controversy in some of the selling countries. Calling the new land deals "neo-colonialism," the UN's top food expert Jaques Diouf has remarked that "Some negotiations [between host countries and the investors] have led to unequal international relations and short-term mercantilist agriculture." In Brazil, the government has become concerned that foreign groups' ownership of land was a "threat to sovereignty."


The possibility of resource wars has concerned many people who foresee growing shortages in coming years, but this new food colonialism has shown that there may be many ways that countries scramble to compete for scarce resources.

Revisiting "The Limits of Growth"

The 1972 book, The Limits to Growth, was a pioneer in the use of computer modeling to predict the future. It ran a model using population, food production, industrial production, pollution, and consumption of non-renewable natural resources in an attempt to see how they would interact under a variety of different assumptions over the subsequent hundred years. It's essential conclusion was that continued growth in the global economy would lead to planetary limits being exceeded sometime in the 21st century, most likely resulting in the collapse of population and the economic system, though this was not a foregone conclusion if there were changes in behavior, policy or technology.

The book was bombarded with negative reviews, almost all of which seriously mis-characterized the book's argument. Reviews commonly made the false claim that The Limits of Growth had predicted that natural resources would be depleted and the world system collapse by the end of the 20th Century. These criticisms ignored the fact that the book made no specific predictions; it ran its computer model under a variety of different assumptions, some of which did not result in a collapse at all. Furthermore, the three main scenerios all showed the economy continuing to grow at the beginning of the 21st century.

More recently, a growing number of authors have taken a new look at The Limits of Growth and found that it's "business as usual" model, which assumed no major changes in behavior or policy, has been in remarkable agreement with the actual course of events. In 2000, oil industry analyst, Matt Simmons, published a paper asking, "Could the Club of Rome Have Been Correct After All?" in which he stated that the most amazing thing about the book was how accurate the basic trends it outlined were 30 years later. Just recently, Graham Turner published "A Comparison of The Limits of Growth with Thirty Years of Reality," which gives a more detailed comparison of book's "business as usual" scenario and the actual economic and environmental data of the past thirty years.

Why did critics of The Limits of Growth get it so wrong? Former World Bank economist, Herman Daily, sheds light on this by describing his efforts to get the ecosystem included in a World Bank report on sustainable development.

The first draft of its 1992 World Development Report, dedicated to sustainable development, contained a diagram labelled "the relation of the economy to the environment". It showed a rectangle labelled "economy", with an arrow entering it labelled "inputs" and an arrow exiting it labelled "outputs". That was it.

It was my job, as senior economist in the bank's environment department, to review the draft and offer suggestions. I said drawing such a picture was a great idea, but it really had to include the environment. As drawn, the economy was receiving inputs from nowhere and expelling outputs back to nowhere.

I suggested we draw a big circle around the economy and label it "ecosystem". Then it would be clear that the inputs represented resources taken from the ecosystem, and the outputs represented waste returned to it as pollution. This would allow us to raise fundamental questions, such as how big the economy can get before it overwhelms the total system.

When the second draft came back, a large unlabelled rectangle had been drawn around the original figure, like a picture frame. I complained that it changed nothing. In the third draft, the diagram was gone. The idea that economic growth should be constrained by the environment was too much for the World Bank in 1992, and still is today. The bank recognised that something must be wrong with that diagram - but better to omit it than deal with the inconvenient questions it raised.

The possibility that economic growth could end was a blind spot that traditional economics couldn't deal with. Daly writes that there is evidence that the global economy is approaching the limits of what our planet can cope with, and that, "As long as our economic system is based on chasing economic growth above all else, we are heading for environmental, and economic, disaster."

New Scientist magazine devoted its October, 2008 issue to the subject, "How Our Economy is Killing the Earth," arguing that science is telling us that, if we are serious about saving the Earth, we must fundamentally reshape our economy into a steady state economy. But an economic model with no growth heresy; nothing terrifies governments as much as the lack of economic growth.

Today the twin probelms of global warming and peak oil further challenge the idea that economic growth can continue indefinitely, and perhaps only for a very limited amount of time. The result is the rather grim conclusion that, although there are measures for us to take to avoid disaster, the specter of the end of growth still causes too much in denial for us to do the things necessary to change course.

Unconventional Natural Gas Sources Bring More Environmental Problems

In 2004 and 2005 U.S. natural gas production went into decline as production at new wells could not keep up with depletion at older fields. Prices spiked causing plans for new gas fired power plants to be scrapped. Many observers thought that we had reach peak gas production in the U.S.

In the years since then, production has rebounded as more unconventional sources of gas have been exploited such as coal bed methane, and shale gas. According to the Energy Information Agency, unconventional gas sources have accounted for all of this growth.



But, while these new sources have allowed the supply of natural gas to grow, they have brought new problems of pollution with them. Another potential source of natural gas, methane hydrates, promises an even larger supply--if the technology can be mastered--but brings with it even larger dangers.

Coal bed methane requires pumping water from underground to release the methane. The process results in water high in salinity and sodium that is often dumped into nearby streams, where it can damage soil, crops and wildlife. In states such as Montana, coal bed methane production has caused controversy among farmers and ranchers who have their lands damaged by this water runoff.

Shale gas operations have caused even more problems because they require a process of hydraulic fracturing where large quantities of water, sand and chemicals are injected into the shale to break the rock up and release the gas. Serious episodes of water contamination near drilling sites has been documented in Alabama, Colorado, Montana, New Mexico, Ohio, Texas and Wyoming, which has resulted in a conflict between gas companies and government regulators trying to find out what chemicals are being used in the process.

Even graver risks may result from exploiting methane hydrates which are frozen water molecules that trap methane gas molecules. Enormous amounts of gas could potentially be recovered from methane hydrates trapped in reservoirs beneath the sea floor. The danger lies in the potential for the methane to be thawed and released into the atmosphere. Since methane is also a global warming gas, many times more potent than CO2, such an inadvertant release could result in disastrous climate change. One of the largest extinctions in Earth's history came some 50 million years ago when undersea landslides resulted in the release of methane gas, contributing to global warming that lasted tens of thousands of years.

All of these new sources of energy demonstrate another aspect of resource depletion; it's not only about running out of raw materials, its also about shifting to dirtier, harder to get, and more dangerous resources. With energy sources, in particular, it may seem as though we are continuing to meet demand while the hidden costs continually mount. These costs need to be addressed if we are to find a path to a more sustainable economy.

Water Problems Worsten

Water shortages around the world continue to worsen, compounded by growing demand and increasing ecological damage that is lessening supply.

An estimated one billion people lack enough clean water to drink, and at least two billion lack the water to drink, clean and eat. Lack of water is a one cause of the millions of deaths each year from disease and malnutrition, chronic hunger.

So far, many countries have held the problem at bay by overusing fresh water from lakes or aquifers, and by importing virtual water in the form of food imports.

Industrialized countries are also starting to experience tight water supplies. The most dramatic example of this has been Australia where a six year drought has decimated its rice production--once a major source of supply for Asia. Drought has plagued other areas from California to Spain.

Water is becoming a critical issue for industries that once took its availability for granted. Scott Noesen, director of sustainability and business integration at Dow Chemical, claims that, "Everyone shares this water model where it's cheap, cheap, cheap—then unavailable. It's huge because we're trying to grow around the world, and where we want to grow often has issues of fresh water."

In the U.S. power generation is a major consumer of using almost as much water as agriculture which uses almost 40% of the 345 billion gallons of fresh water used per day.

In South Asia, water has become weapon that India has used against Pakistan. With as many as twelve dams either built or projected for the Chenab River, a vital lifeline for Pakistan. Pakistanis charge that India is using water as a strategic weapon against Pakistan, a country already reeling from hyper inflation, critical shortages of basic food and the ever worsening energy crisis.

Water will continue to be a serious health problem for the poor, while at the same time being a geopolitical weapon between countries, and possibly--like oil-- becoming the focal point for future wars

Urban mining

A tonne of cell phones contains more gold than a tonne of ore from a typical gold mine. An average gold mine produces 5 grams of gold per tonne of rock whereas cell phones contain 150 grams or more per tonne. In addition a tonne of cell phones contains 100 kg of copper and 3 kg of silver, as well as other valuable metals—all of which have been soaring in price.

The quantity of precious metals to be found in discarded electric devices has led to a new phenomenon—urban mining—which seeks to recover these increasingly valuable resources before they are sent to a landfill. The company Eco-Systems in Japan—which has few natural resources—is trying to recover these precious metals from the tens of millions of cell phones and other electronic gadgets that are thrown away every year. Says Nozumo Yamanaka, manager of Eco-Systems, “To some it’s a mountain of garbage, but for others it’s a gold mine.”

Hazel Prichard, a geologist at the University of Cardiff, is working on ways to collect platinum—which comes off of catalytic converters in cars—from the dust that is collected by street sweepers. "I get excited every time I see a street cleaner," she says. Platinum is a vital component not only of catalytic converters but also of fuel cells - and
supplies are running out. It has been estimated that if all the 500 million vehicles in use today were re-equipped with fuel cells, all the world's sources of platinum would be exhausted within 15 years.

The same goes for many other rare metals such as indium, which is being consumed in unprecedented quantities for making LCDs for flat-screen TVs, and the tantalum needed to make compact electronic devices like cell phones.

The metal gallium, which along with indium is used to make indium gallium arsenide, is the semi-conducting material at the heart of a new generation of solar cells that promise to be up to twice as efficient as conventional designs.

That is why the efforts of people like Hazel Prichard to find ways to urban mine these precious metals is of vital importance to any technological fix for the looming problems of peak oil and global warming.